Draft 1 of the OpenDesk.com Public Source License

Wilfredo Sanchez wsanchez at apple.com
Mon Nov 22 20:10:55 UTC 1999


| Fred, as long as you are representing Apple you should make a bit more
| effort to form some undersanding of what other people here are doing.
| I have put in _tons_ of effort on licenses from IBM, ATT, Novell,  
etc., all
| without a dollar of compensation and at significant personal expense.

  For the record, I don't represent Apple except the few times I'm  
at a conference presenting for Apple.  If sending email from MIT  
instead of Apple will clarify that, I'll do so in the future.

  Also, I do think what you are doing is valuable (my apologies for  
sounding like I don't).  When it comes down to it, we have very  
similar (or at least very compatible) goals.  Though I disagree with  
your belief that the GPL's assimilation tactic is a necessary tool.

  I'm pointing out a potential rift that really worries me.  The  
"GPL vs. everything else" problem is significant, and it the biggest  
reason why the BSD and GNU worlds don't share more code, even though  
they are solving similar problems.  I see this becoming more of an  
issue over time, and it's an inhibitor to the greatest value of open  
source.  Philosophies aside, we can all see this one problem.

  Some simple clarification of "derived work" in the GPL would help  
here, but not all users of the GPL interpret it in the same way, and  
it's not clear which way it would go;  if you took a poll of GNU  
developers, I think you'll see significant variation.  Right now it  
remains vague, which is probably worse than any one interpretation  
might be.

	-Fred


--
       Wilfredo Sanchez, wsanchez at apple.com
Apple Computer, Inc., Core Operating Systems / BSD
          Technical Lead, Darwin Project
   1 Infinite Loop, 302-4K, Cupertino, CA 95014




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